Notes on Windows Vista RC-1

I’m using this entry as a kind of public notebook on what works and what doesn’t as I dig into Windows Vista Release Candidate 1 on both my desktop and notebook computers. I’ll add to this over time, putting newer items at the top.

By the way . . . If anyone running RC-1 wants to add similar notes to the comments, feel free.

• More fun with Google Toolbar . . . I uninstalled the old version a couple of days ago, then reinstalled the newest one, 4.x. The problems I’d mentioned earlier were gone. Today, when I signed on to Vista and launched IE7, I got a message saying Google Toolbar had been updated. It came with an extra “feature” — I could no longer select any of the items in the right-click menu in IE. The menu came up, but the items couldn’t be clicked. When I disable Google Toolbar, everything works fine. (9.16.06)

• Putting my desktop into sleep mode in Vista results in lots of flickering and an apparently unstable video condition (ATI Radeon X1900 All-in-Wonder card) upon return. This doesn’t happen on a notebook. I’ve never been a big fan of sleep, preferring to use hibernate, but Vista’s sleep mode is supposed to be better.

• Google Toolbar’s popup blocker keeps, uh, popping up its notice explaining what it does. You should see this only the first time a popup is blocked. As mentioned earlier, I had to back off from the latest version in order to use its search features at all. (Though a commenter here says he’s had no problems with it in RC-1.)

• The older application I use to take screenshots, HyperSnap DX 4, works fine. Obviously.

• Windows Vista has a very cool and friendly way of moving between windows when many programs are running on your PC, a featured called Flip3d. Windows are presented to you in a 3/4s view, and you can step through them using the scroll wheel on your mouse. In previous builds, you had to invoke a keystroke combination to access it, similar to Alt-Tab in older Windows versions. In RC-1, there’s now an icon in the QuickLaunch area on the taskbar that does this instantly. Screenshot:

• Windows Vista completely turns off its vaunted Aero glass look if just one program is running that doesn’t support it. I went to the QuickTime preferences menu, and got a message saying the interface had reverted to “Windows Basic”. Sure enough, the other windows on my screen lost their transparent frames. (Oddly, the preferences menu for the QuickTime Player doesn’t do this. Weird.)

• iTunes 6.05 works fine. Not exactly. Music plays fine, but full-screen video has plenty of lag and ultimately caused iTunes to quit working. Had to switch to XP to watch a couple of Battlestar Galactica episodes . . .

• Yahoo Widget Engine installs, but some of the widgets don’t behave as they should. Some examples . . . The Doom Mood widget — which uses the original heads-up display from Doom to show system status — shows the speaker volume constantly at 100, and 0 for free disk space. The Digg Search widget starts to launch, then shuts down with a “can’t open this widget” message. None of the WiFi signal-strength widgets work.

• If you download a program from a Web site and click Run rather than Save, the installer always launches behind the browser window, forcing you to click on the taskbar button to bring it forward.

• I really like the icons used for folders that contain images. They’re like manila folders set on their sides, with the photos — tiny thumbnails of actual pictures in the folders — spilling out. Screenshot:

• The User Account Control feature, which prompts you for an OK before performing certain functions, pops up less than it did in previous builds, but it’s still really, really, really annoying. I’m not going to turn it off yet, but doing so is fairly easy.

• For a full-size screenshot of my desktop as it’s set up now, click here (1280×1024 image).

• The Triton version of AOL Instant Messenger refuses to install initially, complaining that it needs Windows XP. You can force an install, but it won’t launch. AIM 5.9 and AIM Pro both work fine.

• RC-1 seems pretty snappy on a 3.4-GHz Pentium 4 process with two gigabytes of RAM. But I do notice that Vista tends to use about 10 percent more memory at any given time than XP does under similar loads.

• Using SpeedBooster, the feature that lets you use a USB 2.0-based flash-memory device to speed up the system, has a noticeable effect on performance, as it did in earlier builds.

• The latest version of the Google Toolbar won’t search in Internet Explorer 7 on Vista. Enter a search term and hit either the Enter key or the Go button and nothing happens. The earlier version works fine.

• Outlook Web Access — a Web-based e-mail interface for Exchange 2003 servers — won’t display a composition frame in IE7 for Vista, though it does in IE7 for XP. Instead, you get one of those little red “X” boxes, as though the composition box is a broken image. Screenshot:

I’ve tried putting IE7 in the Trusted Sites zone, and ratcheting back the security restrictions for that zone. Nothing works.

• Drivers for my sound and video cards are available and work fine. RC-1 comes with decent drivers for ATI Radeon cards — better than the default ATI drivers in XP — but not for Creative’s SoundBlaster Live! cards.

• Vista RC-1 recognized and automatically installed printer and scanner drivers for my Canon Pixma MP750. And, a Vista machine can successfully share one of these printers even if the printer is attached to a machine running XP. Slick.

More and more reasons why I’ll stick with XP — let Microsoft work out all their little bugs before I deal with it. I would never opt for it anyway; I’ll wait until it’s already loaded on a new computer, whenever that’ll be!

Not all of these are bugs. Some are “features,” such as turning off Aero when some program can’t support it. And, keep in mind this is still unfinished. I think I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, though, and it’s pretty cool.

I have Vista RC1 installed with IE7+, together with the latest version of Google toolbar which works fine apart from the right click menu which displays, but items cannot be selected. The workaround is to disable the toolbar (View/Toolbar)until Google releases a fix/update.

I wrote up a guide on how to get it going on an XP (Home/Pro) system for anyone eager to try it out but not having a sacrificial “live” system to try it on. So far so good on two laptops (Dell/HP) and my home-brew (Shuttle) desktop system.

Took screen captures of the installation process.

It went very smooth each time and no errors or hangups.

I also managed to successfully engage a remote-control session of Vista in Virtual PC running the Beta version of Hamachi with UVNC on both systems. Pretty cool. Vista’s program compatibility wizard has handled every installation challenge I’ve tossed at it so far. Impressive.

Yep. Looks like I will be out of cash for at least two copies of Vista next year.

I’m very impressed with the interface. There are a lot of windows now that appear much more intuitively designed, less “geeky”. Browsing the file paths in the address bar is cool. No more back-slashes. The “Personalization” center page is nice. And like any version of Windows, you can customize the heck out of it.

I’m not getting a true test of it’s hardware/software performance while running it in a virtual session, but my user experience is nicely impressive so far. Not sure if Microsoft is planning a Vista RC2 or not. If they do, I’d be hard pressed not to try to install the RC2 version on one of my precious systems “live”.

In fact, my dear bride is already asking me to put it on her AMD64 dual-core laptop right now.

We have Windows XP. It automatically runs MSN Messenger even when I’m not on hotmail. I’d like to turn it off. The Hotmail helpline was of no help. Even when “my status” indicates I’m “off line” others can see that I’m online. I’d like to have to do it manually so I can keep some sense of privacy. Can you help? Thanks.

type, “msconfig,” in your run window and hit enter. Turn off the run msn messenger at start up. Then, do a file search for winshow.exe and delete it. That should solve your problem. Now, if you have the latest build of msnmessenger, you may see a buggy interface if you delete winshow, so do so at your own risk.

As for Vista RC1, I’ve got it on a VERY old system 1.2 GHz celeron with 512 M RAM. It runs faster than XP but utilizes about 30% of my memory even in a resting state vs 10% for XP.

The only real problem we’ve seen is when performing RADIUS authentication via WiFi through a controller that runs a split SSL cert. For whatever reason, Vista just doesn’t send any RADIUS packets. I’ve been working with several of the nice folk at MS on this very issue. With any luck there will be an update before launch. Keep your fingers crossed.

I found the way to get the Red X removed in OWA, which is done by clicking options in owa, scroll down to email security and click install. Follow the prompts to install. At this point, I am able to type a message, however, when I click send, IE7 encounters a problem and restarts.